www.elsblog.org - Bringing Data and Methods to Our Legal Madness

23 August 2006

The Polls - Name Two Justices

I got the full report from Zogby on the recent pop culture
survey. In this survey, people were asked to name only two justices, not all nine. Sixty-one
percent of people could not name any justices, whereas 15% named one and 24%
named two. The press release characterizes Thomas as the “most
recognized justice,” and while prior surveys support this characterization (now that O’Connor is gone), the
Zogby survey on its own probably supports calling him only the “most top-of-mind justice.”

Here are the percentages indicating how often each justice was named:

Thomas

20%

Scalia

11%

Roberts

9%

Ginsburg

9%

Alito

5%

Kennedy

4%

Souter

3%

Stevens

2%

Breyer

1%

Another relevant question was asking people to name the
three branches of government. Forty-two percent named all three, 17% gave an
incorrect “other” answer, and 41% were “not sure.” Unfortunately, it’s not clear what exactly counted as a correct answer to
this question, e.g., did “President” count for the “executive” or the “courts” for the “judiciary”? Without this information, this question is not as interesting.